Tax-free money market funds continued to see positive growth for the week ending March 17, gaining $5.225 billion, though down from last week's $7.251 billion, according to Money Fund Report, a service of imoneynet.com.
As a result, total assets of the 549 tax-free money market funds in the report grew to $488.31 billion, up slightly from $483.09 billion last week.
The seven-day average yield for the funds declined to 2.33%, down 22 basis points from 2.51%, in advance of the Federal Open Market Committee'sdecision on Tuesday to lower the federal funds rate target by 75 basis points to 2.25%. The Fed also lowered the prime discount rate to 2.50%, on the heels of a 25 basis-point cut on Sunday.
Taxable money market funds, meanwhile, saw a whopping $3.50 billion in outflows for the week ending March 18 after losing only $167.7 million the previous week. Total assets dropped slightly to $2.917 trillion, compared with a $2.92 trillion the week before.
Overall, the 1,817 money market funds combined took in just $1.728.1 billion - the third week of substantially declining inflows.
While money market funds reached a new record of $3.406 trillion in total assets - up slightly from last week's record of $3.404 trillion - the inflows were significantly less than last week's $7.084 billion and $24.03 billion two weeks ago.
